Any movement of new disciples and multiplying churches is a work of God. But we can and should seek both best and biblical practices as we pursue those movements. 

The main focus of “The Starfish and the Spider” is decentralization versus centralization.

During one of my rants, a friend asked a simple question that stopped me in my tracks: “What should the church look like?” I didn’t have an answer. How could I be so confident about the problems without knowing a positive alternative?

Without prayer, there simply is no movement of God among any person or any place. Prayer is the greater catalytic work in movements just as blood is the fluid of life in the human body. It flows through every part of the miracle of reproducing disciples and churches.

Submitting to God’s Word and Spirit, God’s people become a church seeking to fulfill all God's commands in a covenantal and confessional relationship. These churches, over time, seek to make more disciples of Jesus and become healthy churches that continue to make and multiply disciples.

In the west, we are driven to radical individualism more and more. We are told that a reliance on one another is a weakness, so we pursue community only through play dates and occasional poker nights as long as they don’t overlap with our family life and what we would like to accomplish.

Because much speculation has been stirred up around Acts, modern church planters tend to lean on church history, personal experience, and preference rather than Scripture when considering how to plant a church.